HONG HU ADOPTEES

At the end of Summer 2004 I paid a visit to PuQi for the purpose of providing information for families of adoptees from that City. While I have never received any emails from these families (they have their own website), at the end of September 2004, I began receiving emails from a couple of people who had adopted children from Hong Hu City.

After initial contact, I agreed to assist them as much as I could, and eventually they set up a Yahoo Forum Group, at which I posted both commentaries and provided over 100 previously unpublished photographs.

One of the things requested of me, was that I write a special article just for their children, so that when they get older, they can have some sort of personal connection to the city. That is the purpose of this article.

I want to state at the outset, that this will be a politically incorrect article. Throughout my stories, I have received the odd piece of hate mail telling me that I should not be in China and that I need to drop my western arrogance, and accept the Chinese as an "ethnic group."

Well, in fact I do accept the Chinese for who they are, collectively and individually, but this does not mean that I should lie, paint a false picture, or gloss over the realities of daily life here in rural China.

If you are a very sensitive politically correct person, or just some insane militaristic ideologue, then don't read the article. I'll tell it like it is; something that, by the way, several westerners living in China have thanked me for. So here is my story for the children.

Traditionally brides and grooms get married in big red gowns.

Dear Cinderella,

You don't mind it if I call you Cinderella do you? After all, I don't know your name. I figure Cinderella is a good name for you, for being a girl (only girls get adopted out to other countries), you lost your birth parents when you were quite young, and whatever your life may have become, at that time you truly were a little girl lost is the cinder, ash, dust, dirt, mud and rubbish of Hong Hu City.

Pretty as a picture. Three little children of three different ages.

And like Cinderella, you had a fairy godmother named "Mom" who made it possible for you to meet a charming prince named "Dad."

OK, maybe he isn't that handsome or charming, but he did whisk you away from a life of poverty to a land of opportunity; a kingdom of equality, even if you are a girl; a land of wealth and prosperity, where people, no matter how destitute, can find kind hearts to look after them.

Cinderella's parents loved her, and you should not imagine that your birth parents did not love you, for they probably did, but life is not always fair or kind, and many things can go wrong, even for the most loving and kind hearted people.

So why were you abandoned you ask? Well, there are many possible reasons.

One reason could be that your parents were killed in a car accident. "Yeah! Sure!" you say, but it is true.

Every year in China, at least 120,000 people are killed in car accidents. Think of how many children are left without parents.

Another reason might be that another kind of tragedy occurred. You see in China, people are often very poor, and must leave children with grandparents and relatives, and travel around the country looking for work.

Imagine what it must have been like for your parents to discover that while they were away, their parents (your grandparents) died, and not knowing where your parents were, the local government officials put you in for adoption.

Imagine your parents feelings when they returned to discover that not only had they lost their parents, but their one and only child as well.

Of course, you are probably thinking that surely someone else in the family could have taken you in. Well yes, that is a good point, but unfortunately, China is still a very backward country where people think that boys are more important than girls, and with life as hard as it is, many relatives would only consider caring for the young orphan if he were a boy. It is sad, but it is true.

Another reason why you might have been adopted, is that in this country that only allows a family to have one child, you may have been the second child, and when your parents could not bring themselves to kill you before you were born, they committed an offense against the government, and the government punished them by taking you away. This happens a lot.

This house plus business dwelling in XinDi has recently been demolished along with the others in this street as the town tries to look more modern.

I have mentioned poverty in China, and so you must also consider that some people might want to put you up for adoption, because at least that way, someone would be there to care for you. Only today I heard of just one such story. Maybe your father lost his job, or perhaps a storm had destroyed all his crops and house, and they saw no way of caring for you. They just did what they knew was best for you.

Then of course, there is another thing to consider. Some old grandparents who still believe in the importance of boys over girls, might well have stolen you from their daughter or son, and abandoned you to be cared for by others.

It is quite possible that they told your parents and the police that you were accidently dropped into the river and had drowned. The river here flows very fast, and several local people every year get drowned and washed away.

Two different styles of living at Huang Jia Kou

I personally know one lady who will not let her mother care for the young granddaughter. She is afraid that her mother will get rid of the child in the hope that she will be allowed to have another baby, but this time a boy. It is sad, but it is true.

Your mother may even have died giving birth to you, and they told your father who was away at that time, that you both had died. He might never have known.

Some people might think that Chinese men only want sons, but this is not true. Just yesterday I heard a young girl talk about how her mother wanted to get rid of her, so that she could have a son. The father refused. She was a very lucky girl.

So there are a number of reasons why you came to be adopted. But of course, you must also face the possibility that your parents only wanted a boy. Do not be angry with them, they knew no better, and in doing what they did, they gave you an opportunity that money in China can't buy - American Citizenship.

And the Band play Waltzing Matilda, in the lanes of a little country town, but no matter how poor, the people they saw, they all had a smile not a frown.

The Bride and Groom's happy day.

I live in Xin Di, which is the administrative town of Hong Hu City. The city itself covers a lot of ground and is made up of a lot of towns and villages that are connected to each other by farmland.

Even Xin Di with it's modern shops and facilities, is a dirty, dusty, muddy and rubbish filled town. When you go into the country it is even worse.

In these photos above, which were taken by Judy at HuangJiaKou (a town of Hong Hu), you can see what a 'Modern' day traditional wedding looks like, although in the old days, both the men and women wore red. Just look at the countryside, and where the band is playing.

There is nothing "rich" or particularly modern about this wedding, and these people are reasonably 'well to do'. They are teachers.

In these next photographs you will be able to see where the wedding was held; in a farming village. You can see the differences between these scenes and those taken in the city.

Wedding day and reception hall at Huang Jia Kou.

Taken by Judy on my camera at Huang Jia Kou some distance from XinDi.

Even in Xin Di, which is the most modern of all the towns in Hong Hu, you can find farm houses. The one in the next photo is located just a hundred metres from the school in which I teach.

And of course, there are the beggars, the labourers (men, women with their children, and young boys whose parents can not afford to send them to school) who dig up roads, and the poor kids whose families can't afford to buy mosquito repellent, so that their arms and legs are covered with festering mosquito bites.

Top: A house one hundred metres from my school. Bottom: The Out house outside of my house in the residential complex. The ground floor dwellers use it as they have no toilets, and must do so come rain or shine. Currently it has no roof.

Huang Jia Kou children at school.

Education is a high priority for everyone in China, and it costs a lot of money. It is neither free, nor equal.

To get into a good school, you have to sit for a test. If you do very well, you don't have to pay so much.

If you do poorly, you have to pay a lot, and of course, if you live far from the school, you will have to be a boarder who rarely sees their family.

Rich people can afford to hire tutors for their kids and so they do better at school, and that means that the rich people will pay less in school fees. Doesn't sound fair does it?

At school, you could be in a class with only 50 other students, or even up to 120 students. You don't get much personal attention from the teacher.

Even the Hong Hu Number Two school at FengKou town (about 45 minutes from Xin Di) is a pretty dirty, poor and crappy place to go to school, and of course village schools are even worse.

The rich people here are really rich, and the poor are really poor, and it is not hard to spot which kids come from poor families, for like in America, young people like to 'show off' their importance by wearing the latest and best clothes that money can buy.

Even so, it is not uncommon for a rich kid to have a poor kid as his 'bestest' friend, and they will walk around holding hands or cuddling. Boys cuddle boys, and girls cuddle girls, and like in most western countries, boys don't like to sit with girls in class.

Top: Some of the Children I taught in my home for a month. Bottom: Some kids from a tiny little village about an hour from XinDi

Now in these photographs of children, they look like "normal" kids, don't they, and of course for China, they are normal. But it is not until you live here that you really begin to understand what "normal" means for these children.

The first time I pulled out a handkerchief in class and sneezed into it, the students all laughed. They thought it stupid that I would cover my face with this piece of cloth. After all, it just means an extra item to wash.

Kleenex tissues are not something that you would waste on your face. If you want to sneeze, then you do it over everyone. If you want to blow your nose, you just push down on one side of your nose and blow out through the other. It is normal, and definitely does not sound as bad as those who do that big loud disgusting "hocking" sound before they spit.

There is nothing like having someone blow their nose or spit, and feeling a fine spray of snot or spit mist falling on your face. It is disgusting.

A regular activity for school kids, both at Huang Jia Kou (top) and Xin Di.

Now of course, there are such things as kleenex tissues and toilet paper, and both are used for the same purpose. The only thing is, you don't get to sit down on a nice toilet seat to do your business. No, No, No! You have to drop your pants and squat down on your ankles, and should you be fortunate enough to live somewhere where they have modern toilets (Chinese version of Modern that is), then you won't have that security and comfort of western privacy. No, No, No!

You will do your business in a toilet that has no door, and where walls only come up about one metre from the floor.

There will be no toilet paper provided, so for heaven sake don't forget to bring your own. What's worse, is that there is no individual toilet that you can flush. No! It is a long deep trench into which everyone does their business, and which automatically flushes every five minutes or so. The sight and the smell is absolutely horrendous.

Blue Sky school in XinDi Hong Hu and its cafeteria.

Of course, if you were back on the farm, IT WOULD BE WORSE.

If your parents are moderately well to do, you would live in a nice high rise apartment.

But I hope you like walking, because a building must have eight stories before they put in elevators.

If you lived on the 7th floor, you would have to walk up and down, up and down, up and down, every day.

I'm sure that the only reason Chinese people are so slim is that they do so much exercise walking up and down those stairs.

The fat people live at the bottom, and the skinny people live at the top; and by the way, if you are fat, they will call you fat. There is no politically correct language in China.

Now if you lived in one of these apartments, it would be very beautiful and you would have a refrigerator.

If you lived in the country however, you probably would not. Every day the food would have be made from scratch, and just keeps getting dished up all day long until it is all eaten.

At the end of the day it will be thrown out. Of course, if you were desperately poor, you would not throw anything out.

If you go to school of course, then you will be lucky enough to be able to eat Canteen food. I hope you like plenty of fish, eels and turtles, because you would eat a lot of it.

They won't serve frogs, because that is too expensive. If your parents were rich you might have to eat them. Then every so often, they will serve "dog." It was only recently that I asked a teacher what "that stuff" was, and she told me. I didn't realise people ate dogs here, because plenty of people also keep them as pets.

No matter what meat the local people eat here, it is always cooked on the bone. Do you like chicken? Well, it won't come served up like your Mom in America cooks it, that's for sure. Nope! They hack it up with a meat cleaver, bones and all, and chop it into little pieces which they cook. Eating it is an exercise in futility for us fat westerners. It's worse than eating fish bones.

No room inside? Well let's sit outside in the sun. Children from No. 5 Middle school.

You will eat a lot of very hot spicy food with lots of peppers and Chilli.

Two years ago when I first arrived, I had never eaten Chilli (or pork) and everyone used to laugh at me.

Now I laugh at them, because sometimes it is even too hot for them to eat.

Despite how clean everything looks in these photos, no dinner table is a nice site by the time the meal is finished.

Chinese people spit out onto the table and floor whatever they don't want or like. Bones, vegetables, bits and pieces of meat or whatever, get spat everywhere.

It is considered impolite to take food out of your mouth with your hands.

Judy, the Chinese American teacher at No. 5 School calls the canteen, the 'MESS' hall, because by the time the kids leave, it looks like a rubbish dump, a real MESS.

Everything in China that isn't wanted just gets dumped on the ground. It doesn't matter where you are; the classroom, the street, the bus, the footpath or the local store, people just spit and snot and throw rubbish everywhere.

They will even do it in your home. One boy complained to one of my visitors that "the foreigner" would not let him spit on the floor. I figure that if it is my house, then he can follow my rules or go elsewhere.

When it comes to throwing rubbish on the ground, "It doesn't matter! It's not important! It is normal!" are what you will hear everyone say.

Top: Mealtime at No.5 Middle School. Bottom: Neighbours who like to visit me on occasions.

Of course, they all like to be politically correct and talk about protecting the environment, but in the end, like everything else around here, it is all just propaganda.

The main thing that you will eat in China is rice. As one boy once said to me, "in China we just eat a little meat and vegetables to make the rice taste good".

Meat is very expensive, and so the usual diet consists of things like cabbage, beans, peas, lotus root, and lots of things that look like weeds, and everything is cooked smothered in herbs and spices.

I don't know why Chinese people are not fat, because everything they cook just drowns in vegetable oil or pig fat, not to mention the amount of sugar they add to everything.

Now while you can buy chocolates, soft drinks and potato chips, as a westerner, you would not like too many of the other things that can be purchased in the supermarkets.

In Hong Hu there is no such thing as NICE tasting milk, wheat bread, butter or margarine, cream, or cheese. Such things as peanut butter, baked beans and tomato paste are so limited that you have to buy them in bulk when you see them.

All the bread is made of rice and is very very sweet and full of that awful tasting milk. It tastes awful because it is full of additives such as vitamins and flavourings.

Three scenes from the inner courtyard of the Big Market in Xin Di. One of the adoptees was found here. It is a really big place full of laneways and everything you can imagine to buy.

We recently got a Mandefu store in town. Mandefu is something of a cross between KFC and MacDonald's, but it is only the rich Chinese and the desperate westerners that eat there. There are no KFC's, MacDonald's, Burger King's, Pizza Huts, or hamburger joints here, and even if there was a "milk bar," you wouldn't enjoy the "malts."

While there are no fun parlours to speak of, there is a skating rink; the river doubles as a swimming pool; there are eight ball parlours set up in back streets, and of course there are a million internet cafes. Most people in China can't afford a computer, let alone connect to the internet.

Huang Jia Kou - top photo is of some type of resort for locals, and the bottom photo is of local houses.

Two of my regular visitors. Boys of Course. It would be unseemly for girls to visit me.

Children in China grow up feeling lonely. I know this for a fact.

Parents don't show much affection to children once they start going to school. It is rare to see children cuddling up to parents, or holding their hands or showing affection. Not even husbands and wives hold hands.

The Chinese are a funny people who don't believe in talking to people they don't know, and so naturally enough, they don't know too many people.

Even in a class of 75 students, some students will not know anyone other than the kids they board with, or their closest friends.

While many boarders miss their parents, when they do go to visit them, there is no kiss or hug, no "hello darling it's good to have you home."

Normally, parents are interested in only one thing. "What are your scores like? - Oh! You got 90% in Maths? Why didn't you get 100%?"

Judy says this is true even in America for Chinese Children growing up with Chinese Parents.

Here, the pressure on children to perform at school is tremendous. Judy recently gave her students a "comic book" drawing exercise, and the pictures were very depressing. All the students feel weighed down by study. Study Study Study Study. That is their life.

After 12 years at school they will go to university, and after that they must find a good job, and when they have saved enough money, then they can think about getting married.

Just recently, a 24 year old English teacher told Judy and I that next year she must "look for" a husband. She does not care if she doesn't love him, but once she reaches 25 years old, she will be an old woman in Chinese thinking, and must marry and have a child so as not to bring shame to the family.

Many marriages in China are not happy ones for this reason.

A wedding on the farm at Huang Jia Kou

In the old days, people only expected to live till they were about fifty years old, so at that time, 25 years old was old.

Today that is not really true, but there is still a lot of pressure on women to marry. And of course, they will not have had sex before they marry.

Young women can marry as young as 20 years old, and young men as young as 22 years old, but most will not marry until much later.

The first part of their lives is spent studying. The middle part of their lives is spent raising a child and caring for their parents. It is only in the last part of their lives that they can take it easy, provided that is, that they are reasonably well off or have a child who has been successful in life.

For the many poor families in China, a child's success at school and university means that the grandparents will have money in their old age.

Unfortunately, as China has developed and gotten richer, many young children are growing up spoiled. They care for nothing and for nobody, least of all for their country and their parents. They only care about doing whatever they feel like doing. The One Child Policy has had some bad side effects.

With parents who never showed them true emotional love, and living in a society that cares for no one and nothing except money, these kids are quite selfish and abusive, and many often get into trouble with the police.

Two different types of houses at Huang Jia Kou and everywhere else in Hong Hu City.

Truly there is a big difference between the kids from poor families and those from rich families. This is of course a generalisation, but the differences are observable. Personally, I love the kids who come from the poorer farms. They are generally nicer and work harder.

Generally speaking, religion and belief in God has disappeared from Chinese thinking. While it is true that Christianity and Buddhism are again on the rise, the Government is careful to control these religions lest they somehow turn the people against the government.

One side effect of both ceasing to believe in God, and the hardships of life in China over the last century, is that people have no incentive to 'help' each other. People generally only care about themselves and their immediate family. This of course holds true in any society that does not really believe in God or an afterlife.

Shaolin Temple in XinDi and its cemetery. The photo was taken from a dirt laneway on the other side of the canal that runs behind the temple. This is not far from No. 1 school and now blocked from view of the main road by recent new buildings.

While propaganda teaches people to say how the Chinese are a family, a special people with a wonderful and glorious long history, most people really couldn't care less about the country or their neighbours. Because the Government was concerned about how much land would be taken up by cemeteries, everyone in China these days must be cremated. When parents die, there really isn't a grave to visit.

Despite their lack of religious faith, many people will still follow some old customs like burning paper money and incense for the dead, and of course, many are very very superstitious. My friend Zhan Yan was not allowed to go swimming for the whole of this year because a Sharman told his Grandmother that it was a dangerous year for him to go swimming.

Two people taking a rest - one more permanently than the other at Huang Jia Kou - Hong Hu City.

Despite the fact that this is a communistic and socialistic country, people here are very capitalistic and won't hesitate to lie, steal, or inflate the price of the items that they are selling, in order to get more money.

It is not just the foreigner who gets ripped off, the ordinary Chinese citizen does too.

One day I asked how much 500 grams of cookies cost, and the boy told me it was 5 yuan, and so I bought some. While he was giving me the cookies, his mother arrived and when she found out that he charged me the right price, she 'told him off'. Next time I went back, the price had gone up to 6 yuan.

One time I sent my boarder to buy some apples, they charged him three times the usual price.

I learned through a bad experience to always give the correct money when buying things, because occasionally the person will refuse to give you the change and will lie and say that there is no change to give.

Be careful of taxi drivers.

As I said, it is not just the foreigner that they cheat, but their fellow countrymen. Cheating of course is not just restricted to just this.

Students cheat in exams. One day I saw 5 students on the stairs giving hand signals to students doing their exams. The school apologised to me when I reported the matter, because they said it was shameful that I "had seen it!"

Most Chinese people do not obey any law or directive unless they are forced to, and this makes traffic in China particularly dangerous. Nevertheless you see lots of kids of all ages wandering all over the streets.

Despite the one child policy, people have what seems to be a careless attitude to life, and it is nothing to see 3 kids riding on one push bike, or 5 people on a motorbike.

I think that this must be the only place in the world where a foreigner can walk faster than a Chinese person on a bike, and ride a bike faster than Chinese people on motorbikes.

It is a funny place to live.

Farm livin' is the life for me, Green acres is the place to be.

Hong Hu is a very cold place in winter, and everyone catches cold. In Winter, everyone wears winter clothing even if it is not cold, and in summer, everyone wears summer clothes, even if it is cold.

Everyone laughed at me last winter during a three day hot spell, because I wore only a short sleeved summer shirt, with no jacket or long underwear. Meanwhile, they were all in their winter clothes, carrying umbrellas and fanning themselves.

Three kids at the big vegetable market in Xin Di and a farmer in Huang Jia Kou

This summer we had a few cold days, and everyone laughed at me because I put on winter clothes. And yet, they think nothing of going shopping in the supermarket in their pyjamas. Funny huh?

Sometimes you just have to wonder if the ordinary citizens here have any brains. Perhaps they have lived for so long being "told what to do," that they have no ability to think for themselves. Certainly I have noticed, that no one questions anything.

All official organisations including schools, will wait until the last minute to tell people of an upcoming event, or of a change in a Schedule, and it makes life difficult for all. But no one questions it. No one ever seems to think about the "why" of life.

From my photographs at Magic City, KingsCalendar.com, and at Yahoo Hong Hu Discussion group, you can imagine what Hong Hu is like NOW. The city is rapidly developing however. By the time you come to visit it, it will be a very different city.

The final photograph in this article was taken at the number three bridge and shows the stagnant river. It captures, in my opinion, the essence of Hong Hu as it is now.

The Yangtze river runs along the south edge of Xin Di, and in the middle of the town there is another river (the one in the photo) that is blocked by a gate at the Yangtze. A few blocks west is another river that does the same. Running parallel to the Yangtze and flowing into the river in the middle of town, is another canal or creek.

When they are empty they are disgusting sights. When they are full, they are just as disgusting, but for additional reasons. Firstly they are stagnant, and secondly they stink. Together with all the fish farms around the place they provide ideal breeding grounds for the millions of mosquitoes that abound in this city. Sometimes they are so thick in places, that you can see them from thirty metres away.

The old river that runs through the middle of XinDi and it blocked at the other end by a lock preventing it from being flooded by the Yangtse.

Whatever you may feel about being Chinese, you should know that Hong Hu is not a traditional Chinese place that one sees in documentary films. There is no local costume, songs or culture to speak of. It is not a quaint place that fills one with images of China's glorious past.

It's only claims to fame are it's natural lake, it's rice and fish production, and as a place in which a famous battle occurred during the revolutionary war.

Beyond that, it is just a town in the middle of nowhere, struggling to come to grips with the 21st century. Most of it's population is poor, and their lives they would gladly swap for yours any day.

Always remember that God has given you a gift that no one in this town can afford to buy. Use it wisely.

I send you my very best wishes, and hope that my articles have helped you to discover who you truly are - your Mom and Dad's daughter.

R.P.Bendedek

Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com

Note: This file was amended August 2007.

R.P.BenDedek is the pseudonym of the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' (www.kingscalendar.com), and he is a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News. An Australian, he currently teaches Conversational English in China. Other Stories can be found at:  http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=128

"The King's Calendar" is a chronological study of the historical books of the Bible (Kings and Chronicles), Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, and the Damascus Document of The Dead Sea Scrolls.